Previously, I wrote an article unveiling some of the most common myths I see in the Local SEO space. I thought I’d do a follow-up that specifically talked about the myths pertaining to citations that I commonly hear from both small business owners and SEOs alike.
Myth #1: If your citations don’t include your suite number, you should stop everything you're doing and fix this ASAP.
Truth: Google doesn’t even recognize suite numbers for a whopping majority of Google business listings. Even though you enter a suite number in Google My Business, it doesn’t translate into the "Suite #" field in Google MapMaker — it simply gets eliminated. Google also pays more attention to the location (pin) marker of the business when it comes to determining the actual location and less to the actual words people enter in as the address, as there can be multiple ways to name a street address. Google’s Possum update recently introduced a filter for search queries that is based on location. We’ve seen this has to do with the address itself and how close other businesses in the same industry are to your location. Whether or not you have a suite number in Google My Business has nothing to do with it.
Darren Shaw from Whitespark, an expert on everything related to citations, says:
“You often can’t control the suite number on your citations. Some sites force the suite number to appear before the address, some after the address, some with a # symbol, some with “Ste,” and others with “Suite.” If minor discrepancies like these in your citations affected your citation consistency or negatively impacted your rankings, then everyone would have a problem.”
In summary, if your citations look great but are missing the suite number, move along. There are most likely more important things you could be spending time on that would actually impact your ranking.
Myth #2: Minor differences in your business name in citations are a big deal.
Truth: Say your business name is "State Farm: Bob Smith," yet one citation lists you as “Bob Smith Insurance” and another as “Bob Smith State Farm.” As Mike Blumenthal states: “Put a little trust in the algorithm.” If Google was incapable of realizing that those 3 names are really the same business (especially when their address & phone number are identical), we’d have a big problem on our hands. There would be so many duplicate listings on Google we wouldn’t even begin to be able to keep track. Currently, I only generally see a lot of duplicates if there are major discrepancies in the address and phone number.
Darren Shaw also agrees on this:
“I see this all the time with law firms. Every time a new partner joins the firm or leaves the firm, they change their name. A firm can change from “Fletcher, McDonald, & Jones” to “Fletcher, Jones, & Smith” to “Fletcher Family Law” over the course of 3 years, and as long as the phone number and address stay the same, it will have no negative impact on their rankings. Google triangulates the data it finds on the web by three data points: name, address, and phone number. If two of these are a match, and then the name is a partial match, Google will have no problem associating those citations with the correct listing in GMB.”
Myth #3: NAP cleanup should involve fixing your listings on hundreds of sites.
Truth: SEO companies use this as a scare tactic, and it works very well. They have a small business pay them for citation cleanup. They’ll do a scan of your incorrect data and send you a list of hundreds of directories that have your information wrong. This causes you to gasp and panic and instantly realize you must hire them to spend hours cleaning all this up, as it must be causing the ranking of your listing on Google to tank.
Let’s dive into an example that I've seen. Local.com is a site that feeds to hundreds of smaller directories on newspaper sites. If you have a listing wrong on Local.com, it might appear that your listing is incorrect on hundreds of directories. For example, these three listings are on different domains, but if you look at the pages they're identical and they all say “Local.com” at the top:
https://directory.hawaiitribune-herald.com/profile?listingid=108895814
https://directory.lufkindailynews.com/profile?listingid=108895814
https://flbiz.oscnewsgazette.com/profile?listingid=108895814
Should this cause you to panic? No. Fixing it on Local.com itself should fix all the hundreds of other places. Even if it didn’t, Google hasn’t even indexed any of these URLs. (Note: they might index my examples since I just linked to them in this Moz article, so I’m including some screenshots from while I was writing this):
If Google hasn’t even indexed the content, it’s a good sign that the content doesn’t mean much and it’s nothing you should stress about. Google would have no incentive or reason to index all these different URLs due to the fact that the content on them is literally the same. Additionally, no one links to them (aside from me in this article, of course).
As Darren Shaw puts it,
“This one really irks me. There are WAY more important things for you to spend your time/money on than trying to fix a listing on a site like scranton.myyellowpageclassifieds.biz. Chances are, any attempt to update this listing would be futile anyway, because small sites like these are basically unmanaged. They’re collecting their $200/m in Adsense revenue and don’t have any interest in dealing with or responding to any listing update requests. In our Citation Audit and Cleanup service we offer two packages. One covers the top 30 sites + 5 industry/city-specific sites, and the other covers the top 50 sites + 5 industry/city-specific sites. These are sites that are actually important and valuable to local search. Audit and cleanup on sites beyond these is generally a waste of time and money.”
Myth #4: There's no risk in cancelling an automated citation service.
People often wonder what might happen to their NAP issues if they cancel their subscription with a company like Yext or Moz Local. Although these companies don’t do anything to intentionally cause old data to come back, there have been some recent interesting findings around what actually happens when you cancel.
Truth: In one case, Phil Rozek did a little case study for a business that had to cancel Moz Local recently. The good news is that although staying with them is generally a good decision, this business didn’t seem to have any major issues after cancelling.
Yext claims on their site that they don’t do anything to push the old data back that was previously wrong. They explain that when you cancel, “the lock that was put in place to protect the business listing is no longer present. Once this occurs, the business listing is subject to the normal compilation process at the search engine, online directory, mobile app, or social network. In fact, because Yext no longer has this lock in place, Yext has no control over the listing directly at all, and the business listing data will now act as it normally would occur without Yext.”
Nyagoslav Zhekov just recently published a study on cancelling Yext and concluded that most of the listings either disappear or revert back to their previous incorrect state after cancelling. It seems that Yext acts as a sort of cover on top of the listing, and once Yext is cancelled, that cover is removed. So, there does seem to be some risk with cancelling Yext.
In summary, there is definitely a risk when you decide to cancel an ongoing automated service that was previously in place to correct your citations. It’s important for people to realize that if they decide to do this, they might want to budget for some manual citation building/cleanup in case any issues arise.
Myth #5: Citation building is the only type of link building strategy you need to succeed at Local SEO.
Many Local SEO companies have the impression that citation building is the only type of backlinking strategy needed for small businesses to rank well in the 3-pack. According to this survey that Bright Local did, 72% of Local SEOs use citation building as a way of building links.
Truth: Local SEO Guide found in their Local Search Ranking Factors study that although citations are important, if that’s the only backlinking strategy you’re using, you're most likely not going to rank well in competitive markets. They found also found that links are the key competitive differentiator even when it comes to Google My Business Rankings. So if you're in a competitive industry or market and want to dominate the 3-pack, you need to look into additional backlinking strategies over and above citations.
Darren adds more clarity to the survey’s results by stating,
“They’re saying that citations are still very important, but they are a foundational tactic. You absolutely need a core base of citations to gain trust at Google, and if you don’t have them you don’t have a chance in hell at ranking, but they are no longer a competitive difference maker. Once you have the core 50 or so citations squared away, building more and more citations probably isn’t what your local SEO campaign needs to move the needle further.”
Myth #6: Citations for unrelated industries should be ignored if they share the same phone number.
This was a question that has come up a number of times with our team. If you have a restaurant that once had a phone number but then closes its doors, and a new law firm opens up down the street and gets assigned that phone number, should the lawyer worry about all the listings that exist for the restaurant (since they're in different industries)?
Truth: I reached out to Nyagoslav Zhekov, the Director of Local Search at Whitespark, to get the truth on this one. His response was:
“As Google tries to mimic real-life experiences, sooner or later this negative experience will result in some sort of algorithmic downgrading of the information by Google. If Google manages to figure out that a lot of customers look for and call a phone number that they think belongs to another business, it is logical that it will result in negative user experience. Thus, Google will assign a lower trust score to a Google Maps business record that offers information that does not clearly and unquestionably belong to the business for which the record is. Keeping in mind that the phone number is, by design and by default, the most unique and the most standardized information for a business (everything else is less standardize-able than the phone number), this is, as far as I am concerned, the most important information bit and the most significant identifier Google uses when determining how trustworthy particular information for a business is.”
He also pointed out that users finding the phone number for the restaurant and calling it continually would be a negative experience for both the customer and the law firm (who would have to continually confirm they're not a restaurant) so there would be added benefit in getting these listings for the restaurant marked closed or removed.
Since Darren Shaw gave me so much input for this article, he also wanted to add a seventh myth that he comes across regularly:
Myth #7: Google My Business is a citation.
“This one is maybe more of a mis-labelling problem than a myth, but your listing at Google isn’t really a citation. At Whitespark we refer to Google, Bing, and Apple Maps as 'Core Search Engines' (yes, Yahoo has been demoted to just a citation). The word 'citation' comes from the concept of 'citing' your sources in an academic paper. Using this conceptual framework, you can think of your Google listing as the academic paper, and all of your listings out on the web as the sources that cite the business. Your Google listing is like the queen bee and all the citations out there are the workers contributing to keep the queen bee alive and healthy.”
Hopefully that lays some of the fears and myths around citations to rest. If you have questions or ideas of other myths on this topic, we’d love to hear about it in the comments!
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Good Morning,
Could you tell us a list of the most important websites, where we can make citations?
Do you know other tips to improve local positioning? Are Google Business Ratings really effective in local positioning?
Thank you for your attention!
Good question, I would also like to know a list of citation sites. And for the question about ratings stars in google my bussines I think that the reviews has a lot of power in the local search, but only in google (not in bing ans others). Please I'm also interested in the same question. Anybody can help us?
Google Star Reviews have a direct effect on placement in the Map Pack, but it's more of a "is the business responding to reviews and active" than "this business has 200 (5) Star reviews". I haven't seen any correlation between those reviews and organic placement in Search.
I second the question on citation sites!
It's dependent on your industry and location, you should look for how your target audience researches where to buy and then make sure you have a presence on those sites
We are a real estate agency in Spain, but dont know a lot of sites for make citations. I was asked for general sites.
I previously shared a few short lists with best citation sources for other countries (besides the main English-speaking countries), and one of them was Spain. You could find the post here. You could also find lists with country-specific citation sources, one of which is for Spain, here.
General sites will only take you so far, you need to find out what resources your audience uses.
For example if you are a real estate agency who specializes in one bed apartments in cities you are likely targeting young professionals who want to live in the city. University Graduates might well be one of your big demographics (I am just guessing here it would require research).
So what I would do from there is try to find some discussions from university graduates about where they want to live and how to find places to live and what sort of reviews etc they look at - this ideally would lead on to a list of websites that they consider as the first places to visit, and the starting point for your citations.
You can find a list of the most important local citation sources by country (for US, UK, Canada, and Australia) here. You can also find the most important citation sources by industry (for the same countries) here, and by city - here.
Regarding the importance of Google reviews for rankings, the "Quantity of Native Google Reviews (w/text)" factor was placed 11th in terms of importance for ranking in the local pack by industry specialists in last year's Local Search Ranking Factors survey (you can find the full survey results here).
Thank you so much for your quick response! You have helped me a lot
Solaire Altea, Moz has several good articles on the subject of building citations (which is slightly different to what today's blog post is about). Here are a few of them:
https://moz.com/blog/finding-and-building-citation...
https://moz.com/blog/why-every-website-should-invest-local-links-citations-whiteboard-friday
https://moz.com/blog/find-nap-variations-before-building-local-citations-whiteboard-friday
https://moz.com/blog/discovering-local-citation-opportunities-whiteboard-friday
https://moz.com/blog/google-places-citations-5-tactics-to-earn-links-for-your-local-business
While it would be great to have one particular list, the problem is this: If that list is public and a lot of people are using it the effectiveness of links from there will start to decrease. If you've compiled a good list for your own industry, that would work far better than a standard list that someone else has put together.
Hey Chuck,
Great question. One of the issues I have with automated tools is just like you mentioned, they miss things and improperly label things. If you're using one of these services, always make sure you also have a human eye look it over. I would never fully leave NAP cleanup to the bots ;)
You are correct with your assumption that this doesn't matter and is nothing you should stress about. It's similar to the lawyer example Darren mentioned under Myth #2 and since the website, business name, and phone # would all match, you have nothing to be concerned about. Google is smart enough to figure it out based on that.
Thanks, Joy.
Loved this article Joy! We run into these myths all the time in the industry. You do a great job collecting the most pervasive ones and dispelling them.
We will be forwarding this to clients who get confused about where to focus their time, energy, and money. You're going to help a lot of people get bigger bang for their buck with this!
Keep myth busting!
Thanks Sarah :)
Couldn't agree more. I love these myth busting posts. They are invaluable in using as a reference when trying to share knowledge with your clients about best practices and what are myths. Thank's Joy!
Good overall review of Citation myths. I am not convinced that Suite myth is accurate or not. My advice when it comes to Suite is to use # instead of Suite or Ste.
The way you control Suite is to have it listed on the same line as the address 1 line.
Example (Good)
1800 Main Street, #A
Austin, Texas 78703
As opposed to (Bad)
1800 Main Street
#A
Austin, Texas 78703
Google My Business recognizes this as a valid address and sends the verification card with that.
Some citation services omit the 2nd address line, that is why you should always put the Suite on the first line.
If you have 2 businesses that reside at the same address, you should use Suite to make the address unique for one of the businesses. In most cases as long as the businesses are unique, you will have zero problem with this.
For Myth #2, again I am not convinced.
Consistency of name has been been a rule for a while. You are using Google as an example, but there is Bing, Apple and probably others. Maybe Google has gotten smarter, but I wouldn't assume that is the case for the other Search Engines.
I have a few clients that have citations showing 2 different businesses listed at the same location as well as variations of their names. I am not convinced that Google would be able to distinguish the variations from duplicates. Cleaning this up IMO is important.
Hi Tom,
I absolutely agree that the more accurate the business information is, the better. However, the myths you mention tackle extreme situations in which people are very worried that minor differences might cause huge problems and tend to spend too much time and/or money rectifying them, while the return on that investment in terms of SEO value would usually be minimal.
As far as the suite number is concerned, it has no SEO value as part of the address. As Joy mentions in the article, Google (and other search engines that collect and compile structured and unstructured business data from a large number of sources) do not pay that much attention at the actual words used in the address field as compared to how the address location can be translated in structured terms - which is usually done using the Geo coordinates (latitude and longitude) of the address. The suite number doesn't affect the lat-long of a place, so it is in practice excluded from the NAP consistency equation. However, you are totally right that from a user's point of view, or when postcard verification needs to be done, having the full and accurate address that includes the suite/unit/apartment number is essential. Otherwise problems, similar to the ones I mention in my answer to myth #6 might occur.
Regarding small variations in the business name, Google is definitely ahead of the game in understanding such variations and making sure no duplicates are created as a result of them. The key here is *small* differences, and it is also important that the rest of the core business information is accurate. For instance, let's say you have two citations featuring the following information:
Citation 1:
Bob's Plumbing
1800 Main Street Austin, TX 78703
512-555-0123
Citation 2:
Bob's Heating, Plumbing, and AC Repair
1800 Main Street Austin, TX 78703
512-555-0123
Google finds both of these and the first thing they do is they decide if they should add them to an already existing record in their database. They find the following similar record in their database:
Bob Plumbing
1800 Main Street Austin, TX 78703
512-555-0123
With the current way the Google business data clustering system works, it is nearly 100% certain that the two citations will be associated with the already existing record and no duplicate(s) will be created. The case is similar for Apple Maps and Bing Places, although their similarity threshold might be lower than Google's, but if we return to the same example, it would still be unlikely that either Apple or Bing would create a duplicate listing. They would rather ignore a citation that features information they cannot associate with significant level of certainty to an already existing record, rather than create a duplicate listing - unless potentially the record comes from a very trustworthy source and is backed up by other sources. That is why everyone should generally be more conservative when working on clean-up of records on any of the data aggregators, as compared to working on clean-up of listings elsewhere on the web.
Thanks,
Nyagoslav
Mr Hang Ten is spot on.
What a fantastic post, Joy! And I completely love Darren Shaw's queen bee analogy. It is really creative and descriptive of the situation.
I'd add one thing about the small variants in name. Completely agree that this is unlikely to impact SEO, but in terms of branding cohesion, I'd say you do want customers to see the same version of your brand in as many cases as possible. I've seen cases where there are so many differences, even on a company's own website, in the way in which a business is referring to itself that it's confusing. Are they The Green Tree Guys, or The Guys, or The Tree Guys? So, while I wouldn't suggest wasting time on low level citations with small discrepancies, I'd urge a business to be sure their branding is as consistent as possible across their website, core citations and social references, for the sake of maximizing the memorability and clarity of the brand.
This article is one for the books! What a super piece.
Joy, this post is very meaningful. You have clarified many questions related to Local SEO & Citation.
Totally agreed with you :)!
Great information!
I hadn't even considered that canceling an automatedcitation building service could hurt the rankings.
It's definitely important to ensure accuracy with your citation listings as noted above. The most important myth busting point to drive home is that the only links you need to build for local sites are citation type backlinks. The strategy doesn't even sound like it would hold value. If I told you to stop getting backlinks, just focus on citation type backlinking, you'd probably be hoping I were right because of the diminishing workload you'd take on. Google is making it harder to rank, not easier. Relevancy is key.
That Myth#2 should be promoted hard. I don't know how many times I had to explain that Google's algo is not as dumb as people think for some reason. Last time it was whether it's okay to use URL website.com/contacts instead of website.com/kontakty (from russian контакты) for a clients page in Russian.
Google knows that contacts is контакты you don't have to put it in letter by letter. People focus on these tiny details while the rest of website is rubbish with terrible content.
If that could help, you could refer people to this resource if they ask about issues with minor differences in NAP and are unsure if certain differences would affect their SEO efforts negatively.
Sometimes I think that some of the SEO stuff out there - like what you mention about the contact page - is put out by webmasters wanting to get their competitors barking up the wrong tree!
Finally! Some common sense on the matter! Far too many articles on the web that are incorrect on citations and cause far too much panic. Great to see some clarity on the matter. Thank you!
Great article Joy!
I've had some outstanding success with Myth 5:
One of the search terms I was targeting returned around 6/10 listings that were all local directories. So naturally, these were the directories I had to target. They were by far the most relevant, brought in a lot of referrals and even if they didn't click through to the clients site, they were still getting calls and bookings from these directories. The beauty with these listings was that when I published the listing, they appeared at the top of the directories for the relevant categories.
What I did find though is that after around 5 weeks, the listing jumped from position 9 to position 2 for a local search "[keyword] + [area]". The "[keyword] + near me" search listing dropped to position 13 due to the local directories having more authority for a "near me" search and the map listing rose to position 1.
All in all, I'd say local directory listings that were relevant and appeared for the keywords we were targeting was actually a huge success. They increased the off-site SEO, referrals, call volume and boosted the listings rankings.
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Many webmasters don't know this issue.
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I love you too, Roger. thank you for your interest
Hi there codeart, thanks for asking a question! It sounds like your question might find a better home in the Q&A forum. It will get more visibility with the community, and there are many experts there who can help crowdsource an answer for you. Best wishes and hope that helps!
Interesting article about local business listing. Thanks @Joy
I always thought that business names in my citations should all be the same, I even corrected them, if I found out that I had rephrased the name somehow. But now I understand that it's not that strict. thanks!
Do you have any advice for how to clean up listings when you've moved the location of your business and there are multiple listings for the old address and the new correct address? I'm struggling to get rid of the old listings with the old business names and old addresses.
Tammy,
Generally I would try to contact the directory to merge the duplicates. I would only ever claim one listing and then try to get the rest deleted or removed.
Thanks for sharing this, Joy! This post is helpful for new internet marketers.
This information did not know much, had read something related before, but did not know if it was relevant. Thank you
As with any kind of offsite SEO it's essential that we try to do a bit of everything and get a good balance whilst doing it. i remember the bad old days when Google Maps / Local Business Listing was all over the place and it was really clear that Google wasn't good at understanding the differences in business names. I'm confident they've sorted that little one out by now.
Articles like this are one of the reasons I love Moz!
One of the guiding principles I use for SEO is that Google is smart. They're smart enough to know that the phone company recycles phone numbers quickly. They're smart enough to know that businesses change their names or move on occasion.
I also think they're smart enough to recognize social signals. They can tell the difference between a Twitter account with a huge following that consists mainly of BOTS and one that has legitimate followers. But that's just my opinion, not proven. A topic for another post.
The article is a real eye opener and thus helps the webmasters to realise the truth hidden behind local SEO NAP listing. Thanks for sharing!!!
Good stuff! I don't think I'm on the wrong sides of the myths at this point, so that;s good news' And I learned some things from the read.
Really nice post, and extremely helpful. I've been dealing with local SEO citations more and more over the years, and sending this to new/prospective clients will save some time explaining - particularly when local SEO and small businesses seem to be particularly susceptible to rumours, hearsay and outdated info...
And it's particularly good to see the realistic measure of citations - I've spoken to a variety of businesses who insisted their SEO was all 'sorted' because they had a few citations, but couldn't understand why they weren't top of Google for every relevant query in quite competitive niches... And I can't blame them, because having seen the outreach emails they'd had from some local SEO specialists, that's exactly what they were promised....
The myth regarding citations for unrelated industries is definitely not true, we had 2 near identical situations, except one had a previously used phone number and we just couldn't get it into maps.
Paul,
The myth was that they should be ignored so the truth was that they should be dealt with. Doesn't that agree with your statement?
Very helpful post, Joy; I'm sure it will kickstart or reinforce a number of conversations within organizations. The suite number one is particularly good; I remember hearing about folks who had a strategy to get redundant listings at suite numbers that weren't actually there in an attempt to cover more categories at the same pin. (yikes.gif)
I do wish it ended with an action plan, of sorts, because I fear skimming the subheaders might leave folks thinking they don't need help, they just have to sign-up for Moz Local for a couple months then they can safely cancel and consider their local SEO to be "done".
Hi, what about to use a keyword in your name, to get the best of the local seo with citation ?? Thanks
I don't suggest including keywords if they are not a part of your actual business name. This generally just looks spammy.
Ooh I can never learn enough about citations. Really enjoyed this!
One question I have is- should you still continue to focus on local citations when you're implementing a national SEO campaign?
David,
I doubt local citations would do much to increase the national presence of a business. I would suggest doing them if you also care about the business ranking locally in addition to nationally. For example, an SEO company might service clients nationwide but it could still help them to show up for things like "SEO Company Denver" (if they're in Denver).
Very useful post detailing the myths many people have in Local SEO. Another useful tactic is adding your address and telephone number on your contact page as well as on the footer of each page.
Thanks for the very useful information in your article.
One major point of confusion in my experience is what happens when you have a service area business and indicate so in GMB and in the citation sources that allow you to do so. These sources then properly omit your street address from your citation, while all other citation sources will list your street address, because they don't give you the option to indicate that you are a service area business and thereby hide your street address. If you then do a scan of such a business using an automated citation service, they will flag the citations that don't list your street address, i.e., the few that are correct, as incorrect and offer to "clean them up." Unfortunately, I don't want these "cleaned up," so I'm somewhat afraid to use these services.
Perhaps you could address this situation in the form of a myth #8: does having two forms of citations for a single business, with and without street addresses, create a problem with Google, or not? And, as a followup, what is the best approach a service area business can take when using a automated citation service that may try to "cleanup" the properly formatted service area address listings that omit the street address?
One possibly encouraging sign is the GMB has an input on the backend to enter the full address of your business, including the street, along with a checkbox to hide it. So it must be aware of both formats…
I second everything Joy said.
In case you are considering working on citations by yourself, there is a super useful spreadsheet Phil Rozek put together on how you could hide (or not include) your address on some of the most important citation sites. You can find the spreadsheet here. The actual article where Phil explains the issue in more detail is here. Additionally, I am sure manual citation clean-up services should be able to tackle this problem.
Thanks, Nyagoslav.
Chuck: "does having two forms of citations for a single business, with and without street addresses, create a problem with Google, or not?"
Why should the lack of an address on the other link be a problem, Chuck? Once Google already knows the location, surely any additional link to that business doesn't necessarily need to have street address etc?
This is very helpful to me for several reasons. The main ones: I had a company recently solicit me to clean up the citations. I already knew what they were, but did not let on that I knew. This company wanted $200 up front, then $99 a month to monitor them. Monitor what? Once they are cleaned up, all the tiny errors that pop up in the so called non-important directories aren't worth $99 a month. Probably a citation check once or twice a year would be a good clean up measure. So this article put me at rest into not caving into many of the solicitation calls I get about Local SEO.
And, the old phone number thing. This is something most of us do not think about looking into. I guess if you have had your number for 15 years or more, the odds of it being in too many places on the web is minimal if not zero. But if you recently acquired it within the last 5 years, that number could have changed hands several times. Especially if you are using a cell number as your main listing and not a land line. This would be worth searching out and definitely cleaning up.
Great Article Joy
Info regarding suites is very helpful. From my experience with Yext and subsequent cancellation, I can second your data on myth #4. My citations seems to have reverted very quickly.
This is a good article, but I think #7 missed the point. I am assuming that 99% of the readers of this blog are interested in the SEO aspect of the information. Which means... who cares if Google my Business is not technically a citation! Google loves Google, and having the power of a GMB listing on your side can do nothing but good things for you.
So my recommendation. Who cares if you are building a social profile or citation, or something else you want to call it. If there is power and authority, just do it!
Hope that is helpful for someone who may have been confused.
Great article, Joy! It's always affirming to read myth busters. :)
I'm agree with Joy Howkins and personally i think that citation and classifieds have very little difference during post or submission. sometimes, i could not identify when i see a new website in classified that it is classified or business listing website or citation.
so there is any specific difference between citation and business listing websites, please share with me.
This was my Question Since long Time. "Myth #5: Citation building is the only type of link building strategy you need to succeed at Local SEO."
Thank you for answering my Question in this post.
Valuable sharing.